We went to the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria. The monument is a combination of a memorial to the Dutch colonists who died in the course of various violent conflicts during their settling in South Africa, and a gallery of exhibits in which the early 20th century Dutch tell their own story the colonizing experience, and a beautiful park and vantage point on a hill. This is a place to celebrate the colonizers and I saw nothing here about the experience of the colonized people. In the future I think the place will also include revisionist introspection having discussions about the experience of the colonized people but currently any updated interpretation at the site is Dutch nostalgia for a time where European colonization was only a good thing.
The monument itself is beautiful inside and out. The design of the place recommends that visitors enter through any of the parks on around the monument, go up a stairway to the monument towering above them, enter into a gallery with a narrative in friezes on the walls around them, take stairs up to enjoy the view, then go down below the main level to see changing exhibits. For anyone who wishes there is a park with plants labeled as for a botanical garden, an armory museum on the compound and some distance away, and a museum to the Dutch experience in South Africa at the beginning of the modern era.
The first thing that we noticed were the depictions of the traveling Dutch in the 1800s. The story of the Dutch in South Africa begins in the 1600s but the monument focuses on the time after the British move into South Africa, conduct the invasion of the Cape Colony to expel the Dutch, and drive them from the ports further inland to land which was less useful in the British Empire’s colonization and globalization plans. In the various depictions, including a few statues, some friezes in the main gallery on the ground floor, and in the exhibition panels in the lower level, the Dutch are dressed in what I recognize as the dress of the American pioneer. I have no idea how global fashion worked before 1900 but apparently there was a tie between what Americans wore to travel the Oregon Trail and what the Dutch wore to flee the British. Maybe much European fashion was the same at the time. Along with the fashion there were covered wagons in most pictures, which I guess makes since because it would have been the height of technology for land shipping and people moving anywhere. I had not realized that covered wagons existed outside of the United States. I am not aware of various cultures making different models of covered wagons. Maybe the design is near universal for anyone doing colonizing or maybe there was cultural exchange.
The next thing we noticed is that the depictions favor the Dutch. The British are villains in all circumstances we saw, and the indigenous population is either villainous or a receptacle into which the Dutch poured their culture. Presumably when this was built the people who funded were really sincere about communicating something and having an expectation of being understood. I think that it is not possible for anyone in contemporary times to understand whatever the builders of the monument wanted to communicate. Apparently at the time of the monument’s design there was an expectation that local people would appreciate the Dutch contribution enough to not scoff at a large monument to it. Nowadays I think that the local people are more likely to perceive the Dutch as having invited themselves to South Africa without the consent of local people and for having displaced native people for the purpose of capturing their resources and labor. To make a monument to the colonization process is a monument to the oppression of a people by foreign invaders. To make a monument to colonization without making space for the colonized people to tell their story communicates that the place is for the Dutch perspective without anyone else’s response, and without a discussion of other views, and without regard even for where or how anyone else can hear the story from the culture which paid the cost of the colonization process and the resources which funded the Voortrekker Monument itself.
There was a contemporary poster in the main gallery of the monument which showed a timeline. The summary statement that it made was that were it not for the colonization process, then South Africa would not be a democracy today, and were it not for democracy and its contributing factors, then South Africa would not be the advanced economy or world power or cultural center which it now is. I do not know how to respond with understanding. Colonization obviously brought some benefits at a high cost to the culture. I do not think that the conversation about colonization advances by speculating how alternative timelines could have played out over hundreds of years. What is more certain to me is that neither the colonizers as individuals nor the organizers of the colonization process had as motivation a vision of a distant future where the colonized people would be independent of them and powerful in their own right. The existence of the monument suggests an expectation of far-future gratitude for which I have seen no evidence that the indigenous people have expressed after some few decades.
On the lower level in the exhibition hall there was a lantern with a fire in it. Perhaps it was an eternal flame, or perhaps it was another kind of symbolism where the museum turns it on for visitors to see. Whatever the case, the description said that the flame represented the Dutch bringing the light of civilization to South Africa. To contemporary people it is offensive to say that the indigenous people were not civilized, or that they requested the cultural teaching which the Dutch offered as civilizing, or that they consented to pay the costs which the Dutch exacted in exchange for their enacting the colonization process.
Also on the lower level there was an image of an indigenous person’s hand grasping a Dutch infant’s foot to swing the body. The caption explained that native people would bash the brains of Dutch babies onto wagon wheels by swinging them in this way. The entire monument communicates that the locals do baby brain smashing as a consequence of their lack of civilization and the inherent wildness of the region.
In a couple of places around the monument there was a depiction of the Battle of Blood River. In the depictions the Dutch dressed as soldiers and with guns attack near naked wild brown people with shields and spears. I know nothing about colonial warfare. I suppose that if in any circumstances someone threatened me with a spear or any weapon then I would feel afraid, and that it would take a lot of bravery for me to challenge such an attack. If there were two sides in warfare and one had spears and the other had rifles, then I would like to be the side with the rifle. It is hard for me to understand how anyone can see bravery in being on the side with the gun, since surely that side is going to shoot everyone and if the other side spears anyone it will be themselves when they are shot from a distance and fall on their spear. Maybe there was something more to colonial warfare, or maybe not. Obviously the people who depicted the Battle of Blood River were feeling the sacrifice of their own blood.
For the future I think that indigenous people should capture the Voortrekker Monument and turn it into a learning center for remembering the colonial experience. The Dutch had a voice and whatever they said in the monument merits preservation but so do the other perspectives. The perspective of the indigenous people is the most important. Regardless of what any official documentation about the monument says I think that its meaning is defined by how the local people think of it.